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The Abolition of the Pot
May. 14th, 2013 08:53 pmHey,
So my reading pace has been atrocious followed up by no time to talk about them. So let's fix that.
First up, The Abolition of Species by Dietmar Dath, translated by Samuel P. Willcocks, a trans-human fable or fairy tale.
The basic premise is that the animals have risen up and taken over. Man has been pushed aside. But when I say "animals", I'm really talking about heavily modified genetic creatures. So one of our protagonists is Dimitri, a Wolf...but he's a wolf with hands (and gills when he wants/needs them). As implied in the title, there is a push towards blurring and bending the divide between species. The technology swirls around the literary philosophizing and sometimes it's hard to pin down.
Anyway, Dimitri works as a freelance diplomat for King Cyrus, a lion who rules from a cybernetic throne. The animals face threats from aquatic creatures as well as Ceramicans -- artificial lifeforms who rule the jungles of South America. How the animal kingdom deals with threats external and internal form the basis of the first 2/3rds of the book and then it skips forward a bit.
This is a dense book and it's tough to come to grips with. The narrative seems straight-forward enough, but it wanders off into various meditations on self and the like. It's hard to say how well the book has survived its translation, but I fell I have to give Mr. Willcocks the benefit of the doubt.
Where it really cranks up is in that last third where the genetic polymorphism loosely discussed in the beginning gains traction and it earns it's trans-human brownie points. There's absolutely nothing but people who aren't people in the way we normally recognize it, some existing as machines or very aggressive memes. It's an interesting book but it takes some patience to get through.
Far less patience is required for The Pot and How to Use It by Roger Ebert. It's short and not terribly satisfying. Mr. Ebert had a blog and wrote a short essay on the joy and romance of his rice cooker. You can do quite a bit with a rice cooker apparently. There was a lot of positive response and so Mr. Ebert decided to make a book out of it with recipes and such. I was pretty underwhelmed. For two reasons:
1.) If you've read the essay then you've essentially read the book. If you read the comments, then you've read even more of the book. There was not a lot of new material.
2.) Mr. Ebert is of the shotgun school of cooking where you throw in what you think you need in the amount that looks right and try again if it didn't work out so well. Me? I'm hungry and I want some clear instructions. I'm perfectly fine with experimenting, but only after I get a basic recipe working and that means give me a solid recipe and I'll go from there.
So, not super impressed with this one.
later
Tom
So my reading pace has been atrocious followed up by no time to talk about them. So let's fix that.
First up, The Abolition of Species by Dietmar Dath, translated by Samuel P. Willcocks, a trans-human fable or fairy tale.
The basic premise is that the animals have risen up and taken over. Man has been pushed aside. But when I say "animals", I'm really talking about heavily modified genetic creatures. So one of our protagonists is Dimitri, a Wolf...but he's a wolf with hands (and gills when he wants/needs them). As implied in the title, there is a push towards blurring and bending the divide between species. The technology swirls around the literary philosophizing and sometimes it's hard to pin down.
Anyway, Dimitri works as a freelance diplomat for King Cyrus, a lion who rules from a cybernetic throne. The animals face threats from aquatic creatures as well as Ceramicans -- artificial lifeforms who rule the jungles of South America. How the animal kingdom deals with threats external and internal form the basis of the first 2/3rds of the book and then it skips forward a bit.
This is a dense book and it's tough to come to grips with. The narrative seems straight-forward enough, but it wanders off into various meditations on self and the like. It's hard to say how well the book has survived its translation, but I fell I have to give Mr. Willcocks the benefit of the doubt.
Where it really cranks up is in that last third where the genetic polymorphism loosely discussed in the beginning gains traction and it earns it's trans-human brownie points. There's absolutely nothing but people who aren't people in the way we normally recognize it, some existing as machines or very aggressive memes. It's an interesting book but it takes some patience to get through.
Far less patience is required for The Pot and How to Use It by Roger Ebert. It's short and not terribly satisfying. Mr. Ebert had a blog and wrote a short essay on the joy and romance of his rice cooker. You can do quite a bit with a rice cooker apparently. There was a lot of positive response and so Mr. Ebert decided to make a book out of it with recipes and such. I was pretty underwhelmed. For two reasons:
1.) If you've read the essay then you've essentially read the book. If you read the comments, then you've read even more of the book. There was not a lot of new material.
2.) Mr. Ebert is of the shotgun school of cooking where you throw in what you think you need in the amount that looks right and try again if it didn't work out so well. Me? I'm hungry and I want some clear instructions. I'm perfectly fine with experimenting, but only after I get a basic recipe working and that means give me a solid recipe and I'll go from there.
So, not super impressed with this one.
later
Tom
